I am the President of Coughlin Associates and a widely respected storage analyst and consultant. I have over 30 years in the data storage industry with multiple engineering and management positions at high profile companies.
I have many publications and six patents to my credit. I am also the author of Digital Storage in Consumer Electronics: The Essential Guide, which was published by Newnes Press. Coughlin Associates provides market and technology analysis (including reports on several digital storage technologies and applications and a newsletter) as well as Data Storage Technical Consulting services. I publish a Digital Storage in Consumer Electronics Report, a Media and Entertainment Storage Report, and a Capital Equipment and Technology Report for the Hard Disk Drive Industry.
I am active with SMPTE, SNIA, IDEMA, the IEEE Magnetics Society, IEEE CE Society, and other professional organizations. I am the founder and organizer of the Annual Storage Visions Conference (www.storagevisions.com), a partner to the International Consumer Electronics Show, as well as the Creative Storage Conference (www.creativestorage.org). I am also a Senior member of the IEEE, Leader in the Gerson Lehrman Group Councils of Advisors and a member of the Consultants Network of Silicon Valley (CNSV). For more information about me and my publications, go to www.tomcoughlin.com.

Non-Volatile Memories Preparing To Go Mainstream

Coughlin Associates released the 2014 Emerging Non-Volatile Memory and Storage Technologies and Manufacturing Report. Tom Coughlin is one of the authors. The authors will be presenting some results from the report at the SNIA Data Storage Innovations Conference next week in Santa Clara, CA. and at a May 13, 2014 Storage Valley Supper Club Meeting (http://www.eventbrite.com/e/storage-valley-supper-club-vi-registration-11190293469).

The memories addressed in this report include PRAM, RRAM, FRAM, MRAM, STT MRAM and a variety of less mainstream technologies such as carbon nanotubes. Based upon the level of current development and the characteristics of these technologies, resistive RAM (RRAM) appears to be a potential replacement for flash memory. However, flash memory has several generations of technologies that could be implemented before a replacement is possible so this transition won’t occur until the next decade.

MRAM and STT MRAM will start to replace SRAM and DRAM within the next few years and probably before RRAM replaces flash memory. The rate of development in STT MRAM and MRAM capabilities will result in lower prices, and the attractiveness of replacing volatile memory with non-volatile memory make these technologies very competitive.

Moving to a non-volatile main memory and cache memory will reduce power usage directly as well as with new power saving modes, provide faster recovery from power off and enable stable computer architectures that retain their state even when power is off.

It is projected that MRAM and STT MRAM annual shipping capacity will rise from an estimated 80 TB in 2013 to 16.5 PB in 2019 with revenues increasing over the same period from $190 M to $2.1 B. This will drive demand for capital equipment to manufacture MRAM. While MRAM can be built on standard CMOS circuits supplied by large semiconductor fabricators, MRAM and STT MRAM do require specialized fabrication equipment that is similar to or the same as that used in manufacturing the magnetic read sensors in hard disk drives.

The increasing demand for non-volatile memory based upon MRAM and STT MRAM will drive total manufacturing equipment revenue used for making the MRAM devices (not including the CMOS creation) to rise from an estimated $52.9 M in 2013 to $246.3 M in 2019. This increased equipment demand; combined with a possible reversal in HDD shipments could significantly drive recovery of the magnetic capital equipment industry. You can find out more about the report at: http://www.tomcoughlin.com/techpapers.htm).

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